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Reviews
Matlock: The Temptation (1994)
stupid writing
A major part of this whole episode is the premise that Matlock is allergic to any kind of suit except the pale gray suits he wears every day. No charcoal gray, no navy blue--nothing. My wife and I jokingly say "They had a short script that week"--so they added the ridiculously nonsensical "allergic to dark suits" scenes. Terrible writing, insulting to viewers, and unprofessional to the max.
I like Matlock, generally, but the creation of Matlock's "dumb hick" character is a major flaw., and the show succeeded only b/c of Andy Griffith's popularity. The Southern-cracker man-boy who just happens to be a genius in the courtroom is unfortunate, to say the least.
Van der Valk: Payback in Amsterdam (2022)
unrealistic and predictable
At several places in this episode, the plot and writing are allowed to be very unrealistic and even predictable. No spoilers--but there are some places where the plot-progression seems very amateurish. This series has so much more possibility than it shows. The beautiful, exotic, and exciting Amsterdam locales are not being used well. And the skills, both mental and especially physical, of the Amsterdam cops are not being put to best use. Finally, I reject the premise that veteran, experienced homicide detectives like they're supposed to be can be surprised, shocked, beat to the punch, and overcome by the bad guys as often as they are.
Jeff Lynne's ELO: Wembley or Bust (2017)
a true genius at work
Jeff Lynne's musical genius shows in all of his terrific songs. His backing band adds vigor and texture to every song, bringing vocal and instrumental mastery to the stage at the UK's largest stadium.
PS--it's my understanding that Wembley Stadium holds 90,000, even for concerts. Why does the description say "a sold-out crowd of 60,000"? There were a lot more than 60,000 at that concert.
Perry Mason: The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll (1959)
Nonsensical writing
My critique is simple. The Hollywood episode writers in 1959 make the characters sound like they just got off the plane from Britain. Characters sound like they're on the streets of London. A vendor will be asked "Have you any papers?" And he will answer "No, I'm sorry, I haven't any." Not "Do you have any papers?" and not "No, I don't have any."
A witness tells Mason, "I was out with a man." Mason asks, "*Has this man a name?" Not "*Does this man have a name?"
In court Mason will say to the judge "I should like to ask that this item be marked Exhibit A for the defense." Not "I would like . . . " The judge will say "It shall be so marked." Not "It will be so marked."
My complaint is, No American talks that way, not even in 1959. Americans say "Do you have any papers?" and "I would like to ask . . . ," etc. The dialogue in this episode, and in dozens of others in this series, is British English, not American English. Why were American script-writers writing British English for American actors to speak in 1959? When you watch this episode, or any others like it, the dialogue sounds contrived and artificial. It detracts from the otherwise excellent production. Someone should've said something.
Matlock: The Starlet (1989)
pathetic character development
I chose this episode to review, but my comments could apply to any Matlock episode beginning with Season 3 and continuing to the end of its TV run. My beef is with how they developed Matlock's character after year 1. In year 1, Matlock is portrayed as a smart, savvy, relatively sophisticated Atlanta attorney, as we would expect of someone who graduated from Harvard Law. But beginning in season 2, and continuing every year after that, they changed Matlock's character.
He is no longer smart, savvy, or sophisticated. In fact, outside the courtroom, he's an idiotic jackass. And in his dealings with women, especially his supposedly intimate relationship with prosecutor Julie March, he is an emotional cripple who is incapable of expressing his feelings about anything, especially love.
And most of his dialogue consists of continuous stuttering and repeating the same words over and over. That may be how some Southern people really talk, but it makes Matlock look like a damn fool. I don't know whose idea it was to develop his character in this direction, but whoever it was, they should've been fired. It ruins what otherwise could've been a great show.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Scared Crazy (2005)
overt politics ruins good suspense
Far too often during the GWB years the writers of Dick Wolf's franchise Law-and-Order shows allowed their personal political views, and their animus against GWB, to intrude on their scripts, to the detriment of the show's quality and the viewer's enjoyment. That is the unfortunate case in this episode, a story that begins well with a high-tech mystery but quickly degenerates into political sermonizing about the evils of torture.
Even at the time the events were happening--during the Iraq War and its immediate aftermath, 2003-11--there was plenty of room for vigorous debate about the place, or non-place, of torture in the military toolbox of a nation like the USA supposedly committed to ethics and morality. So the appearance in this episode of the issue of torture is not the problem. It's the one-sided nature of the dialogue. There is no discussion, no debate. The message is clear--the policy of the GWB administration, and military, is wrong, and even "evil." No other POV is tolerated or allowed. No discussion is permitted.
How the plot winds its way to this final conclusion will be left to the viewer to navigate. The episode contains the usual healthy helping of twists and turns, questions and non-answers, that keep Detectives Goren and Eames hopping and forced to apply their best skills toward a final solution. But their articulation of that solution seems stilted and wooden, not police-like at all. And that's b/c it came from the writers pushing their political agendas. Dick Wolf should've dialed the overt political statements back a notch or two.
Matlock: The Fatal Seduction: Part 2 (1993)
Pure stupidity
The deficiencies written into Ben Matlock's character during the last few years of this otherwise great series are literally stupid beyond words. The writers, normally clever and agile in producing exciting and meaningful scripts, generated a character in their writing of Ben Matlock who was little beyond a demented, robotic senior citizen incapable of anything except for brilliant legal thinking.
And that, brilliant legal thinking, is what he morphs into every time he's working on a case, both in and out of a courtroom. He becomes an unstoppable investigator and a Perry Mason-like courtroom wizard who defeats every effort of the bad guys to thwart justice.
But in every other area of life, Matlock is a silly, neurotic, miserly old jackass who is so inhibited and emotionally constipated that he can't even tell his only child, his grown daughter, that he loves her. He spends all his free time playing gin with his daughter or playing horseshoes with his hateful cousin Billy, and fighting ferociously when he thinks either one of them is cheating him, which is constantly. His behavior parallels the behavior of a 6-year-old fighting over whose turn it is to bat in a game of wiffle-ball--immature and constantly screeching "No fair!" Except he's not 6 years old. He's a 60-something supposedly grown man.
It doesn't get any better when Matlock deals with women. He is completely incapable of expressing his feelings for a woman, especially the assistant DA Julie Sommars, who throws herself at him and does everything except ask him to marry her. And even then, he is unable to say the word "love."
This character portrait, of a stunted, under-developed psyche that stopped somewhere around age 12, is a foolish and stupid way to portray a man who is as successful in his career and profession as Matlock is. It's not entertaining in the least, and it's off-putting to the max. And such a shame to ruin this great series by portraying the character this way. The series didn't start this way. Somewhere after the first year or 2, someone got control of the production and steered the show in a different direction. It's too bad. They ruined it.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Missing Pieces (2011)
poorly written, poorly executed
Dick Wolf wrote this? You're kidding me. My complaint with this episode is with the writing and the methodology, the execution of the plot, which seems almost non-existent. Perhaps the writers and the show's executives felt that a change of pace from the usual slam-bam action would be good, but this approach seemed almost too far to the opposite extreme. And for those who love the mental challenge of the detective sleuthing out the answers to a difficult crime, this episode seemed especially unsatisfying.
Is it possible that the episode was based on a real case, or perhaps more on the way real-life detectives work? Maybe. I don't know. Because otherwise, I can't figure out why anyone connected with the show would think this clunker would appeal to their viewers.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Harm (2007)
left-wing politics deluxe
This episode is well-structured and well-acted, and I won't reveal any spoilers, in case any readers have not seen the episode. But the episode suffers, as many others in the L&O franchise also do, from too much obvious, blatant leftist politics. So be warned, if you haven't seen this one. Just be aware of what you're in for.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Florida (2007)
piss-poor police procedure
This review is actually a critique of only one aspect of this episode, and that is the writing that reflects exceptionally poor police procedure--procedure that I can't believe would actually ever happen in the real world. So at one point early in the episode (this isn't really a spoiler), Olivia convinces her brother Simon, who is wanted by the feds, to meet her at a bookstore cafe. A federal agent goes with her and plans to take Simon into custody.
Naturally, as *always* happens in these poorly-written scenes, Simon begins to "smell a rat" and he bolts, running out of the bookstore to escape the trap Olivia has set for him. Some trap! The federal agent is nowhere in sight, and Simon escapes.
Now in the real world, that federal agent would've positioned himself near the front door, or at some other obvious site, making it more difficult for the target to just walk out of the place unimpeded. This is one of my "pet peeves" with these shows--"Hollywood writing" intrudes far too often. Just for the sake of drama, like an extended chase scene, the police do completely unrealistic things they would never do in real life. For me, this ruins the episode.
Memo to Hollywood writers--Have people do and say real things that real people would do in real-life situations. No one yells at a suspect when they're 50 yards away from him and only on one side of him. They wait until they have him surrounded, until they have his escape routes blocked off. That's just common sense. These police shows are the worst offenders for this kind of thing.
I suggest that if the writers, directors, and producers would exhibit more common sense in their scripts and productions, their audiences would show their appreciation by viewing more often.
Hypnotisören (2012)
Poorly adapted and too much change from the book
The movie "The Hypnotist" (2012) is based on the 2009 novel by the same name that launched the husband-wife writing team of Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril, writing as Lars Kepler, into the Scandanavian crime-novel genre. This novel, which introduced Swedish Detective Superintendent Joona Linna, vaulted quickly onto the best-seller lists when the English translation came out in 2011. The 6 installments of the Joona Linna series have so far sold 12 million copies. IMO, the books are well-written, though not quite at the Per Wahloo-Maj Sjowall or Henning Mankell level. But they're still very good.
This movie, OTOH, does not measure up to the book in many ways. First, and *always* foremost, is "How faithful is the adaptation of the screenplay to the action of the book?" Every film changes something. Sometimes the filmmakers makes good changes. They resolve the plot more efficiently and more believably than what happens in the book. Alas, that cannot be said for this movie. Without including any spoilers, I'll just say that the film changes the book in a completely unrealistic, unbelievable way.
Second is casting and character. Some really serious questions could be asked here about why the producers chose the actor they chose for the lead role of Joona Linna (a male, btw), and also for the dr. who is also a hypnotist--? IMO, those 2 actors could've switched roles and the film would've worked better. I also felt that the character of Simone, played by Lena Olin, was manipulated by the screenplay in unfavorable ways. Just let her be who the authors wanted her to be, for crying out loud.
I also have the same 2 questions I always have whenever I watch a European-made movie about Europeans. 1, Are all Europeans, and especially kids, really as surly and hateful and disrespectful toward the police as the movie-makers portray them to be? And 2, Are all European men really as passive and unassertive as European movies portray them to be? They never verbally defend themselves, never respond when someone, even a punk kid, accuses them of ridiculous nonsense, never say anything. They just sit there and take all the abuse anyone wants to throw at them. I can't believe Europe is really like that. But European *movies* are really like that.
Bottom line--read the book. This movie could've been so much better with 2-3 tweaks. It got a lot right. But it changed far too much.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Smoked (2011)
Offensive politics and unrealistic writing
This was a fairly good, well-done SVU episode, with a few minor exceptions, until the very end, when the writing failed us again with its completely unrealistic nonsense.
First, the SVU detectives lecture a federal agent about giving a gun to his CI (confidential informant) b/c "we have a serious handgun problem in this country." No cops would ever talk like that. SVU's writers need to keep their personal gun politics out of their screen-plays.
Second, the climactic ending is totally unrealistic. Especially in 2011, no one would be allowed into a police precinct without being thoroughly checked for a weapon. There's no way the dead woman's daughter could smuggle a gun past the front desk and into the station. Further, there's no way the police would allow a shooting victim like that young woman to "view" the people they had in custody as the alleged killers. This whole episode was like one big fantasy.
NCIS: Los Angeles: Out of the Past (2012)
Another inexcusable writing oversight
This is not a full review of this episode. It is only a criticism of a terrible piece of Hollywood writing the show contains. At the first of the show, much is made of the fact that the agents, in the process of finding a dead former CIA agent, also find his dog, a large male poodle. During several scenes where the NCIS agents interact with the poodle, talk to it, and even contemplate feeding it, while they have had it in their custody over several hours, not one person suggests that they should give the dog some water.
Do none of the writers, directors, producers, or actors have dogs? The *first* thing you would do when you find a stranded dog would be to give it some water. OK, so we're supposed to just assume that they gave the dog some water. But the story would make more sense, and create less anxiety for viewers, if they would just give the dog some water.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Shattered (2010)
very unrealistic
A nutty episode that goes off the rails quickly and stays there. Bad writing all the way through. Whoever dreamed up this nonsense ought to be fired and never allowed to write for TV again.
The Resident (2018)
Unrealistic lack of ethics
I'm disgusted with this show. I realize that in the real world there are instances, perhaps many, of the colossal egos of tenured doctors getting in the way of doing the right thing at hospitals and clinics, but it seems to me that this show has taken these things to a new low. I can't say much more without crossing the line into spoiler territory, so I'll just say that the continual ethical and moral violations of the powerful doctors on this show, accompanied by the amazing unwillingness or inability of anyone to stand up such gross professional negligence, is beyond belief to me. And for a show to interest me, it has to be at least moderately believable. This show stopped being believable several episodes ago.
9-1-1: Full Moon (Creepy AF) (2018)
Unacceptable inaccuracy
For a show that deals strongly in medical issues, this episode at one point unacceptably perpetuates a medical myth. Revealing this doesn't, IMO, qualify as a spoiler, and I don't think it will ruin the plot for anyone.
The Fire-Department guys are called to a specialized yoga class where all the participants are late-term pregnant women. One woman has become "stuck" in a yoga pose and says she can't move because of severe pain in her back and legs. After the fire-guys/EMTs examine her, they determine that the baby is OK and that she has probably injured her back attempting the difficult yoga pose. Then the FD leader says, "She probably just *slipped* a disc."
The problem, of course, is that there is no such thing as a "slipped disc." Spinal-column discs don't "slip" in and out of the spinal vertebrae like greasy pancakes. Discs herniate. They get tears in them, and those tears allow the fluid that separates and cushions our vertebrae to ooze out and press against the spinal nerves, causing pain.
This is the 2nd "medical" program I've seen on TV within the past few months where the script has inaccurately perpetuated this incorrect myth. Why not just say, "She has herniated a disc"? Why not share correct medical information, instead of medical myths? I fault the show's writers, consultants, and producers for thinking we're all too dumb to be able to handle the correct medical terminology here.
Matlock: The Umpire (1988)
contains sloppy mistakes (***spoiler alert***)
This episode of Matlock does not live up to the usual standards of other episodes. Specifically, the research is seriously lacking. The beginning of the episode depicts a fast-pitch softball game between 2 teams in a community softball league. There are major problems with how the game and the behavior of the players are portrayed.
First, the players on the team in the field, and especially the pitcher, are constantly yelling at the umpire about his strike zone. In a real game that would never be allowed. Anyone who argued about the strike zone would be quickly ejected, and the players would know that from previous game experience.
Second, after Matlock decides to take the case, when he first visits his client Charlie in jail, and Charlie is telling Matlock what happened in the game that led to the murder, Charlie says, "Well, it was the top of the 8th, and . . . ." Then later, at the end of the episode, Matlock asks Charlie to review his memory again, and Charlie says, "OK, it was the bottom of the 9th, and . . . ." So the entire episode is based on the premise that the game lasted for 9 innings. But softball games last for only 7 innings, not 9. It would not have been difficult to write that fact into the script so viewers could've easily understood that.
Third, and finally, the murderer is caught, in part, because the runner at the end of the game slid into the umpire and cut the umpire's leg with the steel spikes the runner was wearing. But every umpire in a fast-pitch softball game would be wearing steel-toed shoes and heavy- duty shin guards, and he also would not have been close enough to the plate to have been spiked by a sliding runner. IOW, the entire basis for Matlock's final courtroom "gotcha" moment is completely unrealistic. In a real game, things would never have happened that way.
I regret to say that these mistakes render this episode of Matlock very sloppy, very unprofessional, and not at all believable.
Anthropoid (2016)
heroic courage during WW2
Anthropoid takes its name from the real-life Operation Anthropoid, which was the attempt by Czech resistance fighters in 1942 to assassinate Nazi General Reinhard Heydrich, the "Butcher of Prague."
This film is exceptionally realistic and stays very close to the actual historical events. And why not? This is one of the most dramatic, epic-heroic stories to ever come out of any war. It needs no cinematic embellishment. And to their credit, the writers and filmmakers mostly just tell the story as it happened. They even found an actor to play the role of Heydrich, Detlef Bothe, who actually looks like Heydrich. That has not been the case in many previous films that have tried to tell this story.
Anthropoid is rugged, difficult, and heartbreaking, just like the real war it chronicles. It tells of heroic sacrifice against overwhelming odds in the ongoing struggle against evil. In that regard, its lessons mean just as much today as they did during WW2.